April 14

Upcoming Dates/Reminders:

• All Star Reading-  We are busy working our way to a baseball game against the HC Varsity team!  Books read for reading minutes count for this as well.  
• April 19 (Wednesday)- Chapel.  All of the 3rd grade class (my room and Mrs. DeZwaan's) will be leading chapel.  A few students have speaking parts and will be leading in prayer or scripture verses.  The rest of the time we will be singing praise and worship songs with the school.  Feel free to join us if you are able.  Chapel is at 10:20 a.m.  
• April 25 (Tuesday)- Spring Program at the High School gym starting at 6:30.  Please bring your child to Main Street in the High School between 6:05-6:15 so I can line them up for the program.  We have been busy practicing at school and it is going to be a great night!
• April 26 (Wednesday)- POD service project.  All POD groups will be going to the organization they volunteered at in the fall to serve in our community.  We will be out of the building for the afternoon that day.  This is an afternoon that we look forward to using our discipleship practices of servant living and community growing.  
• Book Orders:  I sent home two new flyers today and plan on placing one last order for the year on April 24.  Feel free to look at different grade levels online as well.  Just click on the Scholastic link on the top right hand corner of the blog.  All payments can be done online or you can write a check to Scholastic, send in the order, and I will place it for you.  
• May 10 and 11 (Wednesday and Thursday)- We will be dismissing at 11:30 for Tulip Time.  Thursday is the day we walk in the parade and will stay at school for lunch and then take a school bus to the parade route.  More information will be coming home soon about this.

Curriculum Highlights:
Devotions:  Several friends ended our student led devotions.  We had great reminders of God's love from Hayden F., Hayden D., Taylor, and Micah.  This students loved leading devotions and I am incredibly proud of all of them.

Reading:  We have begun mystery book clubs.  Each day students are busy discussing witnesses, suspects, clues, and even red herrings that are occurring in their books.  If the assigned reading is not completed in class you will see the book come home.  Any book club reading that is done at home may count for the 125 reading minutes for the week.  This will also work to complete the mystery inning for all star baseball.

Writing:  This week we worked on a faith based writing called How I know God is Real.  We brainstormed and wrote down ideas on how we see God in nature, scripture, and our lives.  We have narrowed down what we want to focus on in our writing and will be working on our rough drafts next week.

Math:  We have begun a new unit dealing with story problems.  We are reading carefully to determine which operation we need to use and to decipher exactly what the question is asking of us.  We are working our way into two step problems.  This week we drew a lot of pictures to help us understand the problems.

Bible:  All of our lessons this week focused on Jesus' walk to the cross.  Take some time to review the Easter poster your child created in class this week and discuss the importance of each event.  This was very meaningful for so many students.

Social Studies:  We are learning about the history of Michigan.  This week we talked about historians and how they use clues and artifacts to help them learn more about history.  We began discussing the Hopewell tribe and will continue next week with the tribes of the three fires.

May you have a blessed Easter weekend,
Lynae